


The Space Between the Threads

by lady_ragnell



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Community: trope_bingo, Crossdressing, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 14:16:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would have been nice of Arthur to warn Gwaine that his sister is coming to stay. Especially before he offered his guest room for Gwaine to change in before the charity event they're doing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between the Threads

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't rated because it's the closest you can get to a PWP without actually having any porn involved.
> 
> **Warnings/Enticements:** crossdressing (for charity but also implied for pleasure), strong hints of D/s, very unresolved UST
> 
> Written for my "crossdressing" square on my Trope Bingo card.
> 
> The title is from a quote by Lori Howe: "Lace is as much about the space between the threads as it is about the threads themselves."

“Oh now. What have we here?”

Gwaine will deny till the end of time that he yelps, but he can’t deny dropping the dress he’s trying to figure out how to don without ripping any seams or getting stuck. When he turns around, tottering on the heels he put on first because he doubted his ability to bend in the dress he stole off Elena, there’s a strange woman at the doorway of Arthur’s guest room, hefting a huge duffel. He takes a second to place the long dark hair and the raised eyebrow and another to try and pull together anything resembling charm, because it’s not every day you meet a model, even if she is your best mate’s sister. “You’d be Morgana, wouldn’t you? I’ve seen your picture on Facebook. It doesn’t do you justice.”

“I should hope it would, it would be hard to make a living otherwise. And you are … one of my brother’s football mates, no doubt, no other university lad would be caught dead with both stubble and heels. Most tend to pick one or the other.” She nods at the green lace panties that are all the fabric that’s between him and the world. “Though I may be wrong about that. I commend your attention to detail.”

With that, she shuts the door with both of them inside and goes about settling into the room as though he isn’t even there, which goes to show that Arthur’s particular brand of ridiculousness must run in the family. “My first and hopefully only time, but that’s no excuse for being shoddy,” he says after a pause that’s just a little bit too long.

Once again, her eyes linger around his hips, but no matter the twitch of interest he can’t help, he doesn’t think she’s looking at his cock. “Of course.” She goes back to rummaging in her bag for something or other, and he goes back to trying to figure out the dress, which should not be as complicated as it is. Eventually, he decides on just tugging it over his head and squirming until it fits, but like she’s psychic or something Morgana interrupts before he can. “You’ll only rip it that way.”

“Well, how do you recommend I put it on, then?” he asks, exasperated.

She wrinkles her nose at it. “I wouldn’t put it on at all.” Gwaine gives her a point for that one, since he suspects Ellie just pulled it off a rack on a whim on one of the shopping trips Vivian drags her off on. It’s wildly different from her usual taste and, if he’s not mistaken, size. “But if you must, I’d recommend unzipping it first and stepping in. I’ll do your zipper up if you don’t want to ask Arthur.”

“I’ll give it a shot.” He thinks he’ll be able to stand on one foot long enough to step into the dress, anyway. “It’s not as though I’m trying to be pretty, the charity gets the money whether I make a good picture or not.”

“They may not care, but you do.”

Gwaine rolls his eyes and shakes the dress in her direction before fumbling with the zipper. How do girls _deal_ with these things? “If I cared, I wouldn’t be wearing a dress with this many ruffles. And I probably would have shaved my legs.” He considered it, but only because he knows Merlin’s going to show the lot of them up and he had vague thoughts of solidarity.

“Maybe I’m mistaken.” She looks nothing like Arthur, but he’s beginning to recognize how very alike they are, how she dismisses him even if she’s interested in the conversation the same way Arthur would before Merlin and Gwen formed their Society to Make Arthur Pendragon Behave Like An Actual Human Being or whatever they have going on.

He’s never backed down from Arthur, and he won’t do it from Morgana no matter she’s five years older and the most gorgeous woman he’s ever seen. “What do you think I want to look pretty for, then?”

Morgana glances over at him and then goes back to trying to find something specific in a smaller bag she’s lifted out of her duffel. “The dress, the shoes, those are for everyone, though I’m impressed you found shoes that fit, heels for men aren’t a joke.” She gives a thin smile and palms something, then wanders across the room to him, right into his space, looking up at him more because of the heels than because she’s short. “The panties, though. No one will see those. No one was meant to, anyway. Those are for you. Is it your first time?”

Not really, but he’s not about to tell her that. Pendragons believe in _winning_ conversations, even ones about the weather, and Gwaine isn’t going to cede anything. “Attention to detail, is all. This skirt is short.”

Morgana smiles like she won anyway, with red, red lips. “Well, for what it’s worth, I think you look _very_ pretty. Shame to cover up all that lace and skin, but at least someone will know what you’ve got on. Now hold still, I’ve got something for you.”

“Do you bring presents for all your brother’s uni mates?”

“Only the ones I catch in my bedroom with their panties on.” She holds up what she was looking for in her bag—a tube of lipstick, and when she uncaps it, it’s the same bright red she’s wearing on her lips. “Stay still,” she reminds him, and he waits, lips parted, as she draws a perfect line of red around his mouth, never a hesitation or a smudge. By the time she finishes, his cock is straining against the lace, the slight roughness of it only making it all better or worse.

“The red’s too bright for the dress,” he says, mostly to be obnoxious—he spends enough time around Vivian to know that kind of thing.

“I didn’t mean it to complement the dress, pet,” she whispers, still a breath away from being pressed against him, and laughs when he can’t help his shiver. “Good boy. Now put your dress on.”

And fuck, Gwaine might not make everything into a competition the way Arthur does, but he knows when he’s been beaten. He doesn’t bother trying to hide the way he swallows. “Okay.”

“Unzip it,” she says patiently, and walks back to her luggage, leaving him standing in the middle of the room feeling as though he’s going to explode. He catches sight of himself in the mirror over the dresser, all red lips and wide eyes and stubble, and only fumbles to move when he hears Arthur yell something out in the main room, probably at Merlin.

Morgana doesn’t look at him once while he unzips the dress and struggles to step into it, balancing on the nearest piece of furniture to keep from falling as he has to lift his feet. The second he gets the straps settled on his shoulders, though, she’s behind him again, sliding the zipper up his back without a hitch. Gwaine sucks in his breath so it zips all the way and squirms when it’s done, the cloth tighter around his ribcage than he’d like. “Thanks,” he says when she doesn’t move.

“The panties will be our little secret, don’t worry.” She slides her fingers just a few inches above the hem of the dress. They aren’t touching the lace, but Gwaine takes a deep breath anyway, tight dress making it shakier than he’d like it to be.

“I should go.” Gwaine doesn’t want to leave the room, but Arthur is waiting outside, maybe some of their other friends already arrived, and they’re all waiting on him.

“Of course.” She finally steps away, and then there’s the quick sound of a spritz and the smell of her perfume is settling on him. “There.” He turns around and finds her watching him with a thoughtful smile, not the smirk she’s been wearing so far. “You’ve been a surprise, Gwaine. I’ll see if I can’t … catch you again.”

Something about the way she’s looking at him makes Gwaine think of the rainbow of lace panties tucked in a black plastic bag in the back of his closet, the ones he justified by all of them being on sale if he bought these ones. “Thanks again for all your help,” he says, mouth dry, and stumbles his way out of the dim room and into the bright main room of Arthur’s apartment.

Leon’s there, wearing a muumuu that looks like it belonged to someone’s grandmother and a beleaguered expression, and so is Merlin, in a dress that suits him much better than Gwaine’s does him and fishnets, lording the height the heels give him over Arthur, who somehow seems to think himself exempt from dressing up for this. “You took your time in there,” says Arthur, smirking at him.

“Yeah, and you neglected to tell me your hot sister was coming to stay.” Undoubtedly on purpose. Dick. Gwaine tries to do his usual swagger and smirk in heels, and thinks he gets away with it, too. “Had to give it a shot, didn’t I?”

The guest room door swings open behind him, and when he turns around there’s Morgana, hair more rumpled than it was when he left her, with the clothing Gwaine left crumpled on the floor when he changed in her hands. Which means she’s probably noticed there were no boxers in the pile. “Thought you might need these later,” she says, as indifferent as though she hadn’t just swiped lipstick across his mouth and called him a good boy, and tosses them to him. He catches them on instinct. “And boys? I’m jet-lagged, and I’m planning on a nice long rest. Be quiet when you come back.”

There’s something in her eyes he thinks may be a promise, and when he puts his clothes down on the couch he can feel something in his jeans pocket, nothing he left in there, just about the size and shape of a tube of lipstick with a crackle that means a paper is wrapped around it. “Quiet as churchmice,” he says with what he hopes is close to his usual charm.

“Good boy,” she says, and shuts the door.


End file.
